Whether in-person instruction will resume this school year is “very doubtful,” Dallas ISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa said Monday during an update at district headquarters. He also said the district is contemplating how many students might be required to attend summer school to shore up their academic losses.

And district officials are still deciding how final grades will be tallied for its 154,000 students, as well as how they will evaluate teaching staff through DISD’s evaluation and merit pay program, now that the state’s standardized testing — which serves as the foundation of the ratings — has been canceled for the remainder of the year.

“This is our new reality,” Hinojosa said. “We’re all going through this, and figuring out how we are going to adjust.”

Hinojosa said the district’s level of virtual instruction doesn’t yet match the level of in-person instruction students were receiving. As a result, district officials are studying how — or if — to utilize summer school to help student learning heading into next year.

“We have not made a final decision on that, but I do know we are going to prioritize students that have fallen behind, with whatever achievement gaps they have,” he said.

On grades, Hinojosa said it was important that “no student is punished for something out of their control.” The district is considering grading on a pass/fail basis, he said, but it is waiting on other institutions, such as the NCAA, to finalize their college-acceptance guidelines before the district moves forward.

All the while, as details are ironed out, the spread of coronavirus in Dallas County hasn’t spared the district’s staff and families. According to a district spokesperson, a total of 13 students, faculty and DISD police officers have been diagnosed with COVID-19. One employee, a support staff member at Lang Middle School, is presumed to have died from the virus.

“It has now hit home,” Hinojosa said during his news conference.

Three students — at Long Middle School, and Conrad and Seagoville high schools — are known to have tested positive. Four Dallas ISD police officers have tested positive, as have five other DISD employees: at Adamson High School, Gabe Allen Charter School, Polk Talented and Gifted, and Hexter and San Jacinto elementary schools.

When asked whether any of the stricken employees were teachers and for timelines of the illnesses, district spokesperson Robyn Harris said that DISD “will not be able to share beyond” what limited information was in a news release, citing student and health privacy laws.

Harris later added that with the exception of the student at Long Middle School — who came to school for two classes on March 13 before being sent home — the other cases happened when the district was not holding classes on campus “and no contact would have been made with others.”

“For those who were positively identified since the indefinite closure, Dallas County has taken the lead for contact tracing to occur,” Harris added.

At the start of his news conference, Hinojosa touted the fact that 98.8% of the enrolled students in DISD had connected with teachers in some way. The district — ahead of many of its peers among large urban districts, Hinojosa said — had started distributing laptops and tablets before spring break, which started three weeks ago.

As of Monday, DISD had handed out 83,000 devices to its secondary students, as well as 9,300 mobile hotspots. During a board meeting last month, administrators announced that a telephone survey of 6,000 DISD families found 30% of them without reliable internet access at home.

DISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa departs a press conference to provide updates on the district's response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the Linus D. Wright Dallas ISD Administration Building on Monday, April 6, 2020, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

Hinojosa said that another 15,000 hotspots should be available by the end of April, acquired through a donation from the McDermott Family Foundation, as well as $2.6 million approved by the district’s board of trustees in March.

Akin to student grades, the superintendent offered similar guarantees regarding teacher evaluations, saying that — while plans haven’t been finalized — he wanted teachers to be “held harmless,” and have effectiveness levels roll over from this current year to the next year. However, Hinojosa added that he wanted the system to allow teachers near a higher evaluation level to be moved up, if there was data that supported the move.

DISD is expecting at least $50 million from the government’s various stimulus efforts, Hinojosa said, but added that the district did not have any estimates at this point about how much its efforts during the crisis would cost. DISD has a sizable unassigned cash reserve; as of March 31, the district’s unassigned fund balance was $590 million.

“Hopefully we won’t have to tap into that too much,” Hinojosa said.

Right now, food services, hazard pay (1.5 times normal) for its employees who are distributing food, and printing are major costs, he said. But the district is saving $4 million to $5 million each month, too, because of less usage in fuel and office supplies.

“But I have not had one board member or community member complain about any costs,” Hinojosa said. “They just say, ‘Get those services and supports to these families and we’ll figure it out.’”

On Thursday, Dallas ISD served nearly a half-million free meals as the district moved to once-a-week food service in light of concerns about the coronavirus.

According to official figures from the district, DISD’s Food & Child Nutrition Services department distributed 490,758 meals to 33,667 students and families on April 2, by far the most meals and people served in the past two weeks.

“You can see the amount of demand that’s out there,” Hinojosa said.

Medrano Middle School, consistently the busiest location for the district’s grab-and-go service, was once again buzzing with activity during the three-hour pickup window. Nearly 11,000 meals were served to 912 students and families last Thursday.

All told, since DISD extended its pickup food service beyond spring break after the district closed its doors for in-class instruction on March 23, the district’s food service department has served 1,017,483 meals across nearly 50 locations. During normal times, the district averages about 120,000 lunches each day.

The next window for families to pick up five days’ worth of pre-packaged meals will be on Thursday, April 9, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.